Apple Boosts Quarterly Revenue Guidance on Strong iPhone Sales

[kdarling]

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Yep. Could be.

The next quarterly call will give us a few hints.

 

[foodog]

Except Appple can not claim they sold any iPhones until they are delivered - from their 10-K they recognize revenue

The Company recognizes revenue when persuasive evidence of an arrangement exists, delivery has occurred, the sales price is fixed or determinable, and collection is probable. Product is considered delivered to the customer once it has been shipped and title and risk of loss have been transferred. For most of the Company’s product sales, these criteria are met at the time the product is shipped. For online sales to individuals, for some sales to education customers in the U.S., and for certain other sales, the Company defers revenue until the customer receives the product because the Company retains a portion of the risk of loss on these sales during transit.

Yhus for the 2 iPhone you are waiting on Apple will not recognize revenue until they are in your eager hands.

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good Apple bashing story.

 

[macs4nw]

…..Honestly speaking, if they can sell 9 millions in the first weekend (3 days), do you think they cannot make 5 millions in the coming week?

You're missing the point I was trying to make. The guidance from $34 billion to $37 billion that they issued July 23, was already taking into account the release of both the 5S and 5C, near the very end of the quarter. And even though they tend to be on the conservative side with their guidance forecast, they have a fairly accurate idea of realistically expected sales.

So those estimated five million extra phones is over and above what they were already realistically expecting to sell according to their projected guidance, thus the revised expectation of hitting the top of their projected range.

With yesterday's iMac refresh, and the coming iPads, MBPs, MacPros, perhaps Mini refresh, and possibly displays and tv, barring supply constraints, the first quarter (Oct-Dec) could be a real barn-burner.

 

[ftaok]

You're missing the point I was trying to make. The guidance from $34 billion to $37 billion that they issued July 23, was already taking into account the release of both the 5S and 5C, near the very end of the quarter. And even though they tend to be on the conservative side with their guidance forecast, they have a fairly accurate idea of realistically expected sales.

Exactly. When they issued the revenue guidance back in July, I noticed that the gap between the high and low end was larger than in the 2 previous guidances. They had a $3Bil spread.

This led me to speculate at the time that Apple wasn't sure if they were going to be able to get the 5s/5c out before the end of the quarter. I suspect they've always known what the demand would be, but they weren't sure (3 weeks into the quarter) whether they could make enough phones to have a mid-Sept release vs. a late-Sept or Oct release.

With that in mind, when Apple put out a Sept 10 event date, you "knew" they would have a mid-Sept release. At that point, I should have been buying AAPL on every dip, but alas, I did not.

So we are now 5 days away from the end of Fiscal 2013. We'll hear how well Apple did on that 3rd Tuesday next month. I think we can all expect Apple to beat the $37Bil and probably report an EPS of $8. The iPhone number should exceed 34 million. Key will be the iPad number. I'm expecting an late-Oct release for iPad5/iPad mini2. Not sure how Apple will handle the sell-in vs. sell-out of the older iPads and how that will affect the number. Last quarter's iPad number looked bad, but Apple explained it as a change in inventory ... we'll see.

Just to get it documented, here's my predictions for Apple's Q4-2013 results.

Rev - $37.2bil
EPS - $7.90/share (although I'm leaning towards upping this number)
Earnings - $7.3bil
iPhone - 34.7mil
iPad - 15.4mil (this is really just a guess ... no serious number crunching to arrive at this)